OTTAWA—Conservative MP Eve Adams is in a tough fight to run as a candidate in Oakville North-Burlington in 2015, but a poll this week is showing that the real Conservative battle in this new riding will be against the Liberals.

Forum Research Inc. polled more than 500 voters in the new riding of Oakville North-Burlington and found Conservatives were essentially tied with Liberals for support — with 45 per cent saying they would vote Liberal and 42 per cent saying they would vote Conservative if an election was held today.

One-fifth of former Conservative voters in the riding said they would switch their votes to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, Forum found. The New Democrats had the support of just 8 per cent of the people polled.

Adams and local chiropractor Natalia Lishchyna are facing off on May 24 for the Conservative nomination, which has been dogged by controversy. Adams, the MP for Mississauga-Brampton South, has moved to this new riding as part of the large electoral-boundary shuffle looming for the next election when 30 new seats will be added to the Commons. Half of those new seats are in Ontario, especially in the burgeoning suburbs around the GTA, seen as crucial to all parties’ hopes for gains in 2015.

Adams’ fiancée, Dimitri Soudas, was forced to resign as national director of the Conservative party after Prime Minister Stephen Harper learned that his former communications director had been interfering in the nomination race.

Soudas was out knocking on doors on Wednesday in the riding on Adams’ behalf and told the Star that he remained confident in her ability to win the nomination and the riding.

“She is a strong workhorse with a track record of winning every election she has fought,” Soudas said in an email. “Eve has been door-knocking in Oakville North-Burlington for over a year.”

With an election at least a year away and parties still lining up candidates for the new ridings, it’s likely too soon to see any local polls as a prediction of future results.

But the sampling of 530 voters’ opinions in Oakville North-Burlington does give a report card of sorts to the leadership of the three main parties.

Harper gets a 52-per-cent thumbs-down response to his leadership compared to 39 per cent who approve. Trudeau has a 47 per cent approval rate, compared to 40 per cent who disapproved of the job he was doing.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair scored 37 per cent in favour of his leadership, with 33 per cent disapproving.

The riding has been carved out of the old Oakville and Burlington ridings, which are relatively well-off constituencies with average, after-tax household incomes ranging between about $80,000 to $110,000 annually.

Interestingly, Forum found higher levels of disapproval for Trudeau among people who reported household income between $80,000 to $100,000 a year — an indication, perhaps, that the Liberal leader’s oft-repeated appeals to the middle class are not reaching those with average household income in this strategically important new riding.

The Forum poll was conducted through an interactive, voice-response telephone survey on May 12, among 530 people of voting age in Oakville North-Burlington. Results are considered accurate within four percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

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